am i asking too much?

I just wanted to get some good photos after church of the kids in their Easter-best.

It always seems like it should be so easy. This is how it went:

Me: Open your eyes. The sun is not that bright.

Ok. Fine. Move to the shade.

Natalie, go sit down.

Natalie, go sit down by everyone else.

Ok. Fine. Everyone just wander around, and do whatever you want. (I didn’t really say that, but I look like I still had control of the situation if I say that now.)

Show Natalie how to curtsy.

That’s perfect.

Ian, I was trying to get Natalie.

Ian, stop jumping in front of the camera.

I give up.

Will someone please go get Natalie?

our easter morn

I love Easter.

I have a definite weakness for peeps and jelly beans.

My kids seem to be following in my footsteps.

But Easter became more special and meaningful for us this year.

Like I talked about in a previous post, we did more to celebrate Easter this year.

Every night for the week leading up to Easter, we had one of the kids open the egg for that night. Inside the egg was a paper with the references for the scriptures of that day.

The scriptures were about Christ’s last week leading up to the Resurrection. I have to admit I learned a lot about the chronology.

And we really did have a special spirit in our home as we focused so much on Christ.

Also, every night we would hang up pictures from the gospel art kit about the scriptures we read.

On Easter morning, before going to hunt for eggs that the Easter bunny left, we had breakfast and read the last scripture about Easter morning and hung the final picture up.

I still haven’t brought myself to take it all down yet.

flashback friday: easter sunday best

Happy Easter to everyone.

My memories of Easter include falling asleep listening for the Easter Bunny, but hearing the sounds of the sewing machine going late into the night.

Every Easter morning we got to put on our new dress. I appreciate that so much more now.

Especially that one with the bib.

Mom, if she is reading this, knows exactly what I’m talking about. (Sorry, Mom.)

I hope that everyone has an Easter that is special to them.

mmm, sugar

They may not be the prettiest cookies ever decorated, but they were decorated with love.

And sprinkles.

Lots of sprinkles.

Because there just isn’t enough sweet stuff out there at Easter already, we made some of our favorite cookies yesterday.

My family is actually pretty picky about who likes which cookies, but this is one that everyone loves.

This is just a really good recipe for:

Sugar Cookies

(from Ivory Family Favorites Cookbook)

1 cup butter

1 1/2 cups sugar

2 eggs

3 Tblsp. sour cream

1/2 tsp. almond or lemon extract

1/2 tsp. vanilla

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp. salt

3 1/4 cups flour

Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs, sour cream, almond or lemon extract, and vanilla and mix well. Add soda, salt and flour and mix on low just until combined.  Roll dough into a ball, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate 3-4 hours. Roll out on floured surface and cut into shapes.  Bake on ungreased (I grease them) cookie sheets at 375 degrees for 6-8 minutes. (These cookies don’t brown.) Cool on racks, then frost and decorate.

I haven’t found a recipe for frosting that I absolutely love, but this is a good one and makes just about exactly enough for one batch of these cookies:

Frosting

1/3 cup butter, softened but not melted

4 cups powdered sugar (about half a 2 lb. bag)

1/4 cup milk (or more)

1/2 tsp. vanilla

1/2 tsp. almond extract

pinch of salt

In mixing bowl, beat butter slowly with powdered sugar.  Add milk and continue beating. Add vanilla, almond extract and salt. If needed, add more milk to make frosting spreadable. Color with food coloring if desired.

Christ-Centered Easter

“There would be no Christmas if there had not been Easter. The baby Jesus of Bethlehem would be but another baby without the redeeming Christ of Gethsemane and Calvary, and the triumphant fact of the Resurrection.” President Gordon B. Hinckley, Christmas Message Dec. 2000

So my goal this year is to make Easter just as important to my family as Christmas. I found so many great ideas that i just had to share them.

Last year, on the day before Easter, I saw recipes for resurrection rolls. Of course, I had discovered the idea too late, but filed it away for this year. Easter has a way of catching me by surprise. It's late date this year has given me the time that my absent-mindness needed.

In searching for a recipe this year, I found a wealth of ideas for making Easter a much bigger celebration with your family, right up there with Christmas. But luckily without so much of the commercialization.

We just started our countdown last night, and I thought I could take pictures of what we do and then blog about it after Easter, but then it would be to late if any of you wanted to try any of these things this year.

Besides the resurrection rolls, here are some other great finds:

1.First, the April 2011 Friend has a countdown of the week leading up to the resurrection that I am basing my countdown off of.

2.I really enjoyed this article from LDS living. I've tried to incorporate some of it's ideas too.

3.Finally, this blog I just found is TOTALLY AWESOME. I can only hope to be like the mom on that blog someday. She has a TON of ideas to make Easter special. It's one of my new favorite sites.

So that's it for now. I may post again after Easter to tell how it all played out and to help me make plans for next year.

it wasn’t me

Someone drew on Ian’s bedroom wall with a marker.

He claims it was Natalie.

For some reason, I doubt that.

homemade oreos

The picture is really missing a tall glass of milk.

This recipe isn’t original or new, but it is a really good one for Sunday afternoons.

Or Tuesday mornings.

Or Thursday nights.

They also disappear quickly whenever I take them somewhere.

A few hints: Make the cookie dough about the size of a shooter marble.

The cookies will be crisp right after they bake, but they soften up after a day and become like oreo cakesters.

Don’t use canned frosting. It’s not half as yummy.

These keep well in the freezer and last longer (out of sight). They also taste really good right out of the freezer too; like a little ice cream sandwich.

Homemade Oreos

Cookies:

1 box Devil’s food Cake Mix

3/4 cup oil (I don’t use all the oil-probably 2/3 cup)

2 eggs

Mix well. Roll into balls. Place on greased baking sheets. Bake 350 for 8-10 minutes. Cool.

 

Filling:

1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened

1/2 cup butter

1 tblsp vanilla

2 cups powdered sugar

Beat cream cheese and butter together with vanilla. Add powdered sugar and mix well.

Spread filling between cookies and sadwhich together.

Enjoy.

Work out harder the next day.

happy conference

The weekend of General Conference always feels like a holiday to me. This last weekend was no exception.

The spiritual reservoirs are refilled and we spend a lot of time together.

The kids are happy that I pull out whatever crafty things I can think of. (They get to pretend they have a crafty mom for the weekend.)

We always make an Arctic Circle run in between sessions on Saturday too.

It’s funny how some things you do become a tradition you can’t miss.

Kimi painted me a very nice picture of Jesus.

The other plus to all this is that we can all be happy than unlike other holidays, we get to do this again in six months.

FOUR!

 

This little monkey turned four yesterday.

These are the faces I get when I ask him to smile for the camera.

I took these pictures on Friday when we were enjoying the mid-70 weather.

For his birthday, we woke up to snow.

Since it was conference Sunday we got to all be home and have a lazy morning.

Perfect!

Kimi helped me make birthday muffins.

We discovered that Ian has a hard time blowing out candles.

It went out in the end.

He also took advantage of not for the evening when Daddy usually gets home to open all his presents.

His comments while unwrapping were the best part for me.

Upon unwrapping a frisbee:

“A Frisbee! If I ever get a dog I’m going to name him Chewy!”

He’s been wearing a little plaid fishing hat to be Indiana Jones lately so I was excited to buy him a “real” Indy hat.

Upon unwrapping his hat:

“Now I have two Indiana Jones hats!”

It was also a perfect day for a birthday because we got to go spend lots of time at Grandma and Grandpa C.’s house.

When Ian went to give his Great Grandpa a hug he did his limp noodle pose, which is hard to hug, believe me.

Then Ian said, “That was a great hug.”

 

The cake had a few more than four candles on it so I think he may have been getting nervous.

Luckily, he had two aunts with April birthdays to help him out.

I forgot to actually take the picture while he was blowing out the candles, so we did a little re-enactment.

If sheer will could just put out the fire, it would have gone right out.

 

So that’s the story of Ian turning four.

I declare that he may now stop growing up, because I want to keep this little boy forever.